How to Protect your Privacy -- Personal, Financial, Digital

Kinda like lots of products I buy are “known to the state of CA to certainly, probably, possibly, might, cause cancer?” :wink:

Yes, just like that.

At least you don’t have to read the Prop 65 warning at The Cheesecake Factory and wonder what they’re putting in your food.

I tried to look it up, and I don’t see it at other restaurants, I’m pretty sure it was some kind of a legal settlement after it was discovered that either burnt food or something else they used in the kitchen could cause cancer.

It’s possible that Prop 65 went too far, but the bigger problem IMO is that the label doesn’t identify the chemical. And to be honest, I’d rather be safe than sorry. The list of chemicals is what it is because they have research linking it to cancer, it’s not willy-nilly.

I understand the logic and that there is some kind of link, but lawdy, miss clawdy, why not just have a sticker for the things that don’t have some kind of a link? That would be better for the environment and probably for the people who print the labels because there must be a link to cancer in the ink, glue or bleached label. :tongue in cheek emoticon here:

I have my own domain, and so I can use whatever is before the @ sign, and still get all mail into the main mailbox. So every time I register somewhere, I use an address like prikindel-thatsite@mydomain.com for example:

prikindel-bofa@mydomain.com
prikindel-chase@mydomain.com
etc

So should I start receiving spam from one of those and it seems to be out of control, I simply block that particular prikindel-xxx address, and nothing else gets affected.

exactly what you described is already in the wiki.

Regarding the USPS change of address, if you use a temporary change of address instead of permanent, your address doesn’t get sold through the NCOA database.

It may still be possible for entities sending you mail at your old address to get your new address, if they pay for that when sending out the mail, but they would have to pay for it on every piece they send, not just ones with address changes.

4 Likes

Thanks for the info – added to wiki.

Sharp! Sadly, my wife insists that our next change of address will involve us being moved horizontally. And also sadly, that’s not a sex joke. :laughing:

2 Likes

The Dodd-Frank rollback bill that was signed into law a few months ago includes provisions requiring most CRAs to provide security freezes at no cost, effective September 21, 2018. Without addressing the broader implications of the bill, the security freeze provisions are both good and bad.

CRAs currently provide security freezes because state law requires them to; there was no federal law on this. The state laws differ, most importantly in the maximum cost to freeze or unfreeze and in which CRAs are exempt from the requirements. As usual, some states are more protective of consumers than others.

The good part of the federal law is that it makes freezes and unfreezes free nationwide. The bad part is that it preempts state security freeze laws. This matters because the federal law has several important exemptions:

(The other exemptions are for things like existing creditors or law enforcement, and are not of concern.)

Current state laws might not exempt the same CRAs, but consumers in more protective states will lose that protection once the federal law is effective. Exempt CRAs can still voluntarily choose to offer freezes, of course.

4 Likes

Is this correct? The exemptions to the federal law would only apply to the federal law, each state’s laws will continue to exempt whoever the state chose to exempt.

Or are these “exemptions” not really exemptions, but rather mandated access?

Yes, the exemptions in the federal law only apply to the federal law. However, the federal law also preempts state laws relating to security freezes:

15 U.S.C. § 1681t is the preemption section of the FCRA. So 1681t(b) ends up as (relevant part only):

1 Like

How to turn off Google’s location tracking

On your Android or Apple cellphone

This is so sad. Although the exemptions are understandable, the “follow the money” principle leads me to believe that Equisux et al. will continue to make money from people who’ve frozen their data.

Exemption (J) seems to be the most worrisome. I expect to once again be inundated with junk mail for credit cards, and anyone else that the data whorehouses decide to sell my data to.

2 Likes

To me, that exemption doesn’t seem to allow that. It seems like it’s more for something like opening a bank account, without an extension of credit.

@anotheruser does this change affect the ability to opt-out of preapproval solicitations?

I’m also concerned that this prong can be stretched too broadly. There are CRAs like EWS (similar to Chex), SageStream/IDA, and ARS that might be able to make an argument that their reports are used only for fraud screening, not credit risk analysis.

It is worth noting that the federal law will still be an improvement for many people, as some existing state laws contain similar exemptions. Arizona’s, for instance, includes similar exemptions. (But others like California’s do not.)

It does not. However, security freezes are not considered a prescreened solicitation opt-out on their own, under this exemption:

§ 604(c) is 15 U.S.C. § 1681b(c), the section of the FCRA pertaining to prescreened solicitations. The opt-out provisions under 1681(e) are unchanged.

3 Likes

I didn’t want to create a new post for this lone article. This seemed like a good place to include it.

3 Likes

Goes to show that even if you do your darned best to protect your personal information, you can’t fully trust any business to do the same.

At least not until penalty for not securing our data is higher than the cost of securing it.

Or the cost of lobbying against any reform on liability for data storage/handling parties becomes prohibitive.

2 Likes

In some large companies (Google for example) the penalty to mitigate your information from being sold or shared must be in the multi millions. This is the information age. You can do things proactively to minimize your exposure but the reality is every websearch you do, every credit card you use, anywhere you go with a smart phone or any picture you post to facebook can potentially track you; the things you buy, the places you go to, the things you do. As more data becomes compiled across many companies it’s even more susceptible to hacker or data breach. There’s really nothing we as a consumer of society can really do.

Most people don’t care. Data analytics and data capturing is the future and it will be a billion dollar industry. Choose to live off the grid or recognize there will be a lot of data you truly can’t protect and no company is guaranteed to protect it (no bank accounts, smart phone, and cash only purchases anyone? Better stock up on your guns & ammo and food stuffs). Even then it’s only a matter of time before facial recognition software begins to advertise to you walking into a store. You have all seen the sci fi movies and netflix films of the last decade, right?

Edit: I appreciate the OP is about minimizing spam mail, etc, and perhaps this is a de-rail/rant. However, it’s imprtant to recognize the trend for the future. Political play and regulation of some sort must come into the picture eventually, but how many years did it finally take to start taxing internet sales? It’s even farther behind on any kind of legislative enforcement.

6 Likes